Multiculturalism in Education

Abstract

Today, nation-states face with the challenges of globalization engendered by multiculturalism diverging from the culturally homogeneous model as we know it. A large number of different nations, ethnic groups and minorities live in the world resulting in various linguistic, religious and ethnic characteristics of different cultural identities. This, in turn, requires that cultural diversity of life styles, ethnic groups, sects increasingly focus on their demands for recognition and representation. Since education has a role to shape and affect culture, it is important to define educational policies in multicultural societies to preserve one’s values. In democratically unstable societies, the risk of defining and imposing one culture on others is always inevitable. In such cases the members of “dominant culture” have the privilege to limit or define the way of living, representation or participation of other cultures in the society. In this article, we try to re- evaluate the concept of multiculturalism in education in terms of cultural freedom, individual rights and effectiveness of teaching environments for multi-religious and multi ethnic societies.